Unpacking Generational Trauma

Dealing with trauma is something that is now a norm in our community. It is something that has a huge impact on every aspect of our lives. It affects our mental, emotional, and physical health in many ways. We have made a habit of containing horrific events by saying “what goes on in this house, stays in this house” and other phrases, but when does it become too much? Many acknowledge the trauma, but what does it look like to heal?

I sat down with the Founder and CEO of My Beautiful Life, LLC, Kayla Knight. MBL is a lifestyle brand that promotes self-healing through living mindfully and intentionally. Their motto is “Creating a Beautiful life for yourself by BEING a Beautiful person.” Kayla is a certified Reiki Master and through MBL she is able to provide Reiki services to her community.

Reiki is a technique and practice that focuses on cleansing and balancing the energies within our bodies. These energies that flow are too affected by the trauma we endure. So let’s get into it.

Q: Let’s talk about past trauma and ways it can affect a person?

Just a disclaimer, I am not a therapist or a clinician, and I am speaking solely off of my own experiences and findings through my personal studies as well as experiences with my clients and peers.

That being said, I believe that trauma is something that stays with us and is stored in our physical, mental and spiritual bodies. While we all experience some degree of personal trauma, I also believe that we carry the generational traumas of our ancestors in our bodies and that they have an affect on our current lives (individually and collectively) today. They affect how we see the world, how we make our decisions and how we choose our choices.

Our choices create our entire lives, so when our choices are rooted in traumas, it creates a reality, based on the traumas that we’re carrying. Sometimes, we believe that our personal view of the world is absolute, but everyone's “reality” is based on the things they’ve been taught through their life experiences and in this case, their traumas.

For example, let’s say your grandmother’s family experiences and witnesses horrific, life-threatening events inside their home and in their neighborhood. This would likely cause the family to develop some level of anxiety and/or depression. This could then manifest as your grandmother being irritable; feeling the need to control her kids, and not trusting other people in her space or in her family’s space. She then raises her children with this same energy. Now, until they’re old enough to release it on their own, her kids will likely grow up with these same fears. This creates a reality where they feel the need to always be on guard, and to always be on guard, is to not trust the world around you. This reality is created through their instincts in efforts to survive, but it is based in trauma. From there, future generations could also be raised in this energy of “survival mode”. All as a result of your grandmother’s traumatic experiences and environment.

That being said, we currently have this built-in continuation of trauma going on within our culture, and because we were never taught to deconstruct our own beliefs and heal our generational traumas, the cycle goes on.

I believe that our beliefs construct our individual perspectives of reality. From a young age, we are taught what to believe and not given a choice in what is true for us. Therefore, as we grow wiser, it is our responsibility to deconstruct the beliefs that cause more harm than good by keeping us stuck in this cycle of “survival mode”. With intentionality and love at the center, we can heal ourselves, heal our bloodlines, and move forward in a positive direction.

Q 2: In our community, we have normalized accepting trauma, why is this not okay?

When a traumatic experience occurs, our bodies will typically react in the manners of either fight, flight, freeze, or any combination of these. For fight, when triggered you can become angrily aggressive and automatically want to fight someone in efforts to protect yourself. For flight, when triggered, you could automatically run away from the situation, in efforts to protect yourself. With freeze, when triggered, you automatically freeze up in your tracks, in a state of shock or being stuck in the moment, in efforts to protect yourself from feeling the pain of what’s occurring.

All of these actions are automatic and innate reactions that occur in efforts to cope with trauma.

When we see our parents go through life dealing with their struggles in these ways because they were never taught or given the tools to properly process and HEAL the original traumas, we notice that the pain never lets up. The coping mechanisms are continually passed down, generation to generation, and the cycle continues. They end up running our lives and being in control of our thoughts, our choices and therefore the experiences that we manifest into our realities.

Q 3: Why is it important to heal from this trauma and focus on moving forward?

Though personal traumas don’t ever disappear or fully go away, the goal is to get a handle on them so that you are the one in control again, not your traumas. That way, they don’t have to be passed down to our future generations.

A lot of internal struggles that we face as a people, though only able to be deconstructed by us, are not actually our fault. These traumas are a result of the traumatic experiences of our ancestors being enslaved and the traumatic experiences that we’ve endured in different ways ever since. That being said, though it is not our fault, I believe we have the ability, and some may argue the responsibility, to deconstruct the beliefs which have been instilled in us through our systems, laws and experiences. At that point, they can no longer continue to successfully keep us stuck in these self-destructive cycles of survival mode.

Q4: What’s is reiki and how does it help?

As far as healing trauma, there are so many different modalities that people can utilize and I notice that today we are all looking for these tools to assist us in healing holistically (mind, body and spirit). There are physical activities like yoga and thai chi; there’s therapy; which can include modalities such as brain spotting and emdr; there’s different forms of sound healing; and then there is Reiki which is considered energy healing.

Reiki is an energy healing technique and practice that is used to balance our energy centers. It works to release energy blockages, caused by inner tension, which then typically manifests as outer tension in our physical reality.

When energies that exist outside of us (people, situations, sounds, sights, literally anything) come into contact with us, our feelings about and reactions to those things can throw off the natural balance of our own energy.

We have 7 main energy centers (or Chakras) that naturally flow in a circular fashion when they are open and balanced. When there are blockages in our chakras, that energy that isn’t flowing will be mirrored in the way we feel and in our life experiences.

For example, we have the Solar Plexus Chakra, located 2 inches above our belly button. This chakra is associated with our self-confidence, self-esteem, ability to stand in our self-worth, and our sense of control over our lives. When there is energy stuck in this chakra it could cause tension in the way we see ourselves and therefore the way we show up in the world. Another example is the Heart Chakra. It affects how we treat people (and ourselves). The way we love, hate, and our ability to have and express compassion and empathy. When there are blockages here you may experience many struggles in your relationships with others as well as in your relationship with yourself.

It goes without saying that our personal traumas as well as our ancestral traumas cause tension in our lives and therefore create blockages in our chakras. The practice of reiki gets your energy centers flowing properly so that the blockages that are both causing tension in our lives, and being caused by the tension in our lives, can be released.

Here's a quiz you can take to see what could be going on with your chakras right now!:

https://www.eclecticenergies.com/chakras/chakratest